Not Slowing Down
by prepare4trouble
Summary: Peter's mom doesn't look at him in the same way any more.


A/N -I'm back with yet more fic. Just to explain something quickly, because I couldn't squeeze it into the fic, I'm a little confused on the Wanda thing, if anyone's wandering why she didn't feature. The movie didn't actually mention her, that I know of, and I don't think the little girl could have been Peter's twin, so I kind of bleeped over her a bit here. I hope nobody minds! Also, it annoyed me a bit that they changed Pietro's name, but I decided to go with it...

As always, I don't own the X-Men or anything associated with it. Wouldn't it be cool if I did though?

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Not Slowing Down

Peter's mom doesn't look at him in the same way any more. It started not too long after he helped bust that guy out of jail. The one he's pretty sure is crazy. The one that had basically told him that he had killed the president, and then tried to kill another one on live TV.

She doesn't know what he did, at least, he's fairly sure she doesn't know. She would have said something, right?

Nah, she definitely doesn't know. It's impossible. But she knows something.

Or maybe it's all in his head. He feels pretty guilty about the whole releasing a psycho on the world thing. That is not a piece of information he is going to be sharing with anyone anytime soon.

He finishes up his video game, types his name into the high score and grins as the leader board pops up with his name in the three top spaces. He fishes in his pocket for another quarter, but he's all out. As he turns and walks away, two kids are staring at him with awe, huge grins on their faces. He smiles at them, walks out of the arcade at a reasonably normal pace. He waits until he is outside to switch to a speed he is more comfortable with. In about ten seconds, he is turning the key in his front door.

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"Peter?"

"Yup?"

His mother takes a deep breath before she continues, and that's how he knows that whatever comes out of her mouth next, he probably isn't going to like it.

"Listen, I want you to slow down when you're around other people."

Peter frowns in mock confusion. "Not following you, Mom."

She sighs and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're a smart boy, Peter. I know we don't talk about this, but don't pretend you don't know what I'm saying. It's not safe at the moment, there's a lot of anti-mutant sentiment out there." She pauses again. Normal people do everything more slowly than he does. "I just don't want you getting hurt."

Peter doesn't reply. He gets to his feet and walks downstairs to his basement lair, slowly.

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Until recently, the word mutant barely registered in his vocabulary. He knew, of course. He had known for a long time. He would have to be a whole new level of stupid not to put two and two together and realize that the people with powers that made the headlines sometimes in the crappy sensationalist newspapers he liked to steal sometimes were like him. He just never really put too much time into thinking about it. It didn't really matter, no one believed that stuff anyway.

Suddenly though, it was different. You could hardly switch on the TV without seeing images of the naked blue woman. And by the way, how hot was she? Seriously. He didn't know how they got away with showing it on TV, but there she was, every day, blue, naked and amazing. She was plastered over most of the front pages too. He wondered what had happened to her. He hoped she was okay.

So, he has always known on one level what he was, but he has never cared. It never mattered until now. Now, he is almost afraid. There has been talk of rounding up all the mutants, keeping them somewhere away from the normal people. It's only idle speculation and the moment, loudmouthed politicians and radio hosts, but it's out there, and although he can outrun anyone that came for him, what about his sister? What about all the other mutants out there with less awesome powers than his?

He thinks he's starting to hate the magnet guy, with his stupid superiority complex. Next time anyone asks him to break someone out of jail, the answer is going to be a definite no.

Even if it did sound like a hell of a lot of fun.

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Nothing is as much fun when you're pretending to be like every other boring person on the planet. He doesn't even remember how long it has been since he had to ride the bus. It's not an experience he relishes. As they crawl along the roads between home and school, stopping at every light and crossing, meandering around in inefficient loops to pick up at all the stops, he sits back and tries not to fidget.

It is impossible.

Two rows of seats ahead, a group of kids are talking about mutants.

"I'd round up the lot of them, stick them in prison before they can do any more harm," says one of them.

Peter rolls his eyes, it's the exact same line he heard on the radio a couple of days earlier.

"Forget prison," another one says. "Most of them are too powerful, they'd just bust out. We should kill the lot of them, before they wipe us out."

Peter stands up at his natural speed. He takes a moment for a leisurely stretch before he strolls forward and punches the first kid in the face. It's only a gentle tap, but at that speed it's going to be enough to give him quite a shock. As he pulls his arm back from the punch, he rams his elbow into the second one's jaw. He stands for a short while, watching their flesh slowly ripple in interesting patterns from the impact of his blows, then crouches down he opens their schoolbags. He rummages through quickly, checking for anything worth stealing. Not that he wants anything those two morons might own, but they've got to pay the asshole task.

There is nothing there but schoolbooks and lunch money, one of them has a bottle of water. He pockets the change, opens the bottle and pours a splash or two onto the crotch of each boy. That done, he screws the lid back on tightly, places it back in the bag, and sits back down.

Two rows of seats ahead, there are two almost simultaneous cries of pain. One head slams back into the headrest of his seat, another heads for the ground, dragging its owner after it. A second or two later, there is a burst of laughter as one of their friends notices the wet patches. Asshole number two climbs groggily to his feet, looking wildly around the bus for the culprit, but by then Peter has been sitting back in his seat for what feels like a very long time.

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One of the guys who came to his house is being interviewed on the news. The English guy with the long hair. He's had it trimmed now though, which looks far less interesting. Also – though because the camera is mostly focused on his face – Peter doesn't notice at first, he's in a wheelchair. Must be something the magnet guy did to him. He wonders what it was.

"He looks familiar," Peter's mom says. He is slouched on the couch watching the screen, to his left, she is working her way through a basket of ironing.

Peter shrugs. "Never seen him before."

"Well, he talks a lot of sense," she says.

He hadn't really been listening, his mind had been back at the Pentagon, reliving the coolest and most stupid thing he had ever done. "Cool wheelchair," he says. "Doesn't look like it's got any metal in it."

His mom gives him a sharp glance.

"Want something to eat?" He gets to his feet, and a moment later sits back down with a sandwich. Another plate lands on top of the ironing board. For a moment he thinks she is going to say something, but she doesn't. Instead, she switches off the iron at the socket, brings her plate with her and joins him on the sofa to watch the end of the interview.

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The magnet guy in in the news again. He's started calling himself Magneto. Or maybe he's always called himself that, Peter's not sure. The other members of the jailbreak team called him something more normal.

He's set himself up as some kind of freedom fighter, as though mutants are an oppressed species. What he doesn't seem to notice is that he's a terrorist and that mutants were getting along just fine before he started tearing up stadiums and making threats. Asshole.

But the name is pretty cool. Peter thinks he would like a codename. He starts drawing up a list of good ones. It's too bad the Flash is already taken.

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Peter is at home alone, his mom and sisters are out doing whatever it is that women do when they're not at work or school. Shopping, probably? He plays his stolen arcade game for a minute or two, hits the high score five times, then flicks though the TV channels and finds nothing of interest. He is starting to think about popping out on a quick crime spree, when there is a knock at the door. He checks out the visitors before he answers, and is surprised to see two familiar faces.

He opens the door and to the two mutants. The guy with the claws is missing. "I'm not breaking anyone else out of jail," he says.

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It has been a while since his mom took him shopping. Recently, he has just helped himself to whatever he wanted. He's really been trying to do less of that recently. People like him are getting more and more of a bad rep, and he doesn't want to do too much to add to that if he can help it. So recently if he's needed something, he has paid for it with actual money. He had plenty of it. It's amazing how much you can make selling stolen state of the art technology for rock bottom prices. And it got the evidence out of his house, which his mom was really grateful for. Win win.

But today, the treats are on her. Leaning against the leg of his chair is a bag of new clothes, on the table in front of him is a feast of muffins and cookies and ice cream that he stuffs enthusiastically into his face.

"It looks like a good place," she says.

He shrugged.

"You won't have to hide what you can do there."

Again he shrugged. That might be true, but it still felt like he was being sent away. Even if he had been the one that brought up the offer and said he'd like to go. He hadn't expected her to agree so easily.

"Peter, you know I love you, don't you?"

At that, he looks up from his meal. "Sure..?" he says. Suddenly, he is nervous.

"There's something I never told you," she says. "It never seemed important before, but now you need to know. It's about your father."

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It isn't that far to the school. He didn't need to be driven there, he could have arrived under his own steam, and much faster than the car. But his mom insisted, and it felt right to agree. Being driven to a place, bags in the trunk and a few good tunes on the radio made it seem like more of an event anyway. He hadn't said so, he wouldn't have dared, but he was quite glad his sister had turned down the offer. Going on his own was more fun. It was kind of like going off to college, and that was an experience he had never thought that he would get to have.

"You're sure you want to do this?" his mom asks, not for the first time, as she drives through the gates. The sign on the wall matches the business card that he had found on Charles Xavier that day. Even back then it had sounded interesting enough to comment on. Now, ridiculous as it is considering everything he has done, he has butterflies in his stomach.

He nods. His fingers find the door handle, and pull to open the latch. He takes a deep breath. This feels like the right choice. It is moving forward, not slowing down.

And if it turns out he's wrong, home is only a few minutes away.


End file.
